NecroRAM wrote:
MawBTS wrote:
Call me crazy but I prefer Slipknot's cheesy mallcore stuff to their "trying to be metal" stuff. Personal preference I guess.
This is something thats not talked about enough. They were good exactly because of those first 2 albums.
Thats what Slipknot was and still is in the minds of the majority i believe.
Them trying to "diversify" or cater to metalheads on Vol 3 and beyond is exactly what ruined the band, because a band of that popularity level trying to do legit metal with more complex riffing and solos, metal ballads, etc, just wouldnt sound authentic to what they are: a sick, filthy band. I dont think any of the albums past Iowa had 1/10 of the artistic message as the first two up until the most recent one which was a really good revival attempt with all things considered.
Still, if they just disbanded after the Iowa tour, they still wouldve preserved 100% of their legacy and i think would be way more respected as the band that blew up the mainstream and left without a compromise. Wanting them to be more metal is like wanting The Prodigy to sound like conventional EDM/techno DJs. They were their own unique thing on the first 2 albums where every component from riffs to vocals to samples to theatrics matched with each other and was consistent across the board. After that you had shit like them dressing in suits/jeans with that stupid Corey AHIG mask and a band with a brutal/edgy logo singing ballads like Vermillion or Till We Die. Even on the heavier side, everything started sounding quantized and too contrived for a band like them. If i wanted technical riffs id listen to tech death bands. They were always meant to sound off tempo, imprecise, filthy, with guitars used as just another thing in the mix to add to the palette of heaviness and creepy atmospherics/electronics/samples, not just strictly metal riffing and production. This is what a lot of people dont understand about this band and are quick to disregard them as a nu-metal gimmick or whatever.
In fact thats exactly what i did at first. They werent a gateway for me since where i live they werent on TV or radio and even if i had caught them on international channels like MTV i have no memory of it as opposed to stuff like Linkin Park, Bizkit or Korn which i do remember from back in the day. When i really started getting into music and digging and listening to albums was when i started playing the guitar and even though i was inspired to pick it up by Linkin Park, as i got better and getting into tech stuff like Necrophagist, i fell into the trap of evaluating everything by its technicality and Slipknot were instantly written off as a joke band with too many members and no riffs that would ever compare without even giving them a proper listen beyond a couple of singles and catching shit like Snuff on TV and laughing it off. And even after listening to the self-titled a couple of years after that i only liked Eyeless and thats largely because of Joey's famous intro video and the ending breakdown. It wasnt until another year or two later when i got into more emotionally driven music like metalcore/post-hardcore like early Norma Jean and decided to also explore all the nu-metal i missed out on that i truly became a fan of Slipknot and now at this stage id easily name the self-titled as a top-3 or top-5 90's album in all genres.
It is a very good, a heavy, a unique, emotionally driven album that covers grounds one can only truly understand beyond the surface level at 25+ age. I find the notion that theyre for teenagers very wrong. They wrote those songs in their mid-late 20s, same goes for a lot of the music by many nu-metal bands. I dont think its realistically possible for a teenager with little life experience to actually relate to that music beyond the surface level of heaviness/edginess or whatever. I do think it is some of the best types of music if you want really personal, really emotionally driven and human experience-based stuff. And i do think it was the actual reason it connected with so many people. Sure there were a lot of accidental fans as with anything, or a lot of kids that grew out of it, but those were not the true target audience of their music. And as such i do think that early Slipknot were a 100% authentic, unique and original band. Now, past-Iowa is another story, but music fans in general and metalheads in particular should reassess their views on them i think.
I have to disagree with this, mostly because it relies on premises that aren't true. Slipknot didn't change their sound to be more metal or to have a broader appeal within the metal community. Not only were they doing just fine while being a nu-metal band, but if you've ever watched or read any interview with members of the band, they've always firmly believed that they were a metal band, and outside of diehard metalhead communities, this is exactly how they are perceived by the vast majority of people. Corey Taylor, in documentaries and interviews refers to Slipknot as a metal band. Following the passing of Joey, the band shared a montage video of Joey moments with the band, including one where he says that Iowa is the best metal album of all time.
Slipknot didn't change their sound to be "more metal", they changed it because they wanted to explore other things. When they released Vol. 3, I was a diehard fanboy of the band. I could name all the musicians with their numbers and I made little drawings of them and their masks in my high school agendas. I was not a "real" metalhead at the time. I did like Children of Bodom, Kalmah, InFlames, Megadeth and Maiden, but I didn't have any form of disdain for nu-metal, and I truly loved Vol. 3 when it came out. Not because it was more metal, but because I liked the song-writing, the riffs, Corey's vocals, the drums, the percussions, and I loved how they were reinventing themselves. They had new masks. Clown had this steel keg that he was hitting with a baseball bat in the Duality video (I know it's stupid to like them for that, but I thought it was cool), and I liked the imagery within the album booklet, and the new masks.
By the time All Hope Is Gone came out, I was starting to lose interest in the band, but as a diehard fan, I still bought the album within giving it a single listen first. It was okay, but none of the songs stuck with me. Most nu-metal bands had died out by that point, and the only surviving acts of the time, like Disturbed or Linkin Park, had turned to alternative rock, and it felt like Slipknot were also toying with more rock elements, and leaving out the aggression that defined them early on.
Then the band released .5 The Grey Chapter, which according to the band was their lowest point. So even if they had started to toy with more commercial friendly ideas on AHIG, the band itself didn't perceive itself as creatively bankrupt, losing speed or anything. But on The Grey Chapter, they didn't really enjoy what they were doing all that much anymore.
Now to address the whole idea that nu-metal is secretly not for teenagers and that you have to be older to fully understand it... this just feels really off to me. You're basing this solely on your own experience and ignoring the fact that their entire fanbase was at the time of Iowa was basically 15-25 years old. I also had that phase in my life in which I judged quality based on technicality, but that came later. So maybe you missed on Slipknot as a teenager, but I still firmly remember kids in high school talking about the new Left Behind videoclip. One kid in my art class was talking about how clown has a pentagram carved into his face and eats his own thumb while there is blood spewing over his hands and face. The whole videoclip was very dark, dirty, and it played to this very common emotion that teenagers have, the feeling of being left out, abandonned, treated as a weirdo, an outsider. In the video they even have a young teenage boy being bullied by other teenagers.
I mean, sure, there are subtleties, little intricate details that you might not be able to appreciate fully as a teenager, but there is a reason why this music was so popular with teenagers, and it's because of how raw and violent it is. You don't have to be English literature major to understand "People=shit" or lines line "I've felt the hate rise up in my, kneel down and clear the stone of leaves, I wander out where you can't see, inside my shell I wait and bleed" or "Fuck it all! Fuck this world! Fuck everything that you stand for! Don't belong! Don't exist! Don't give a shit! Don't ever judge me!" These speak to things that teenagers feel. Emotionnal rushes. Emotions they don't fully understand. The need to figure out where they fit it, who they are, and what they want to be. The sadness and anger of being left out, bullied, mocked. Rebellion. Forming their own ideas and beliefs. The struggles of interpersonnal relationships.
Sure, these things can speak to the human condition in general, but they are expressed in a way that appeals to teenagers.
I'm also kind of unsure as to what sentences like this mean "And i do think it was the actual reason it connected with so many people. Sure there were a lot of accidental fans as with anything, or a lot of kids that grew out of it, but those were not the true target audience of their music." Like... how can you know? You're still presuming stuff based on your own experiences and giving the band intentions they probably never had. For instance, I was a "true fan" of the band from the s/t up to Vol. 3, and then I eventually lost interest, even in their early material that I only revisited on occasions. Was I "not the target audience" all along? There is something very presumptous, maybe accidentaly but still, about how you're trying to define the "true" Slipknot fan, and you are somehow it. It has to be someone who likes the s/t and Iowa, nothing else, but who also never ends up liking these two albums less, because there is apparently only one way to really appreciate them.
To focus this back on Joey a little bit, I'd argue that he, and the other musicians in the band were most definitely convinced that they were a metal band. They probably didn't care much for the whole "Is nu-metal really metal or not?" debate, and they were surely convinced that they were just pushing the genre further. Which they were. Regardless of if you think of their music as metal or not, Slipknot were something else entirely. And to Joey's defense, the guy implemented elements of so many different metal genres in his stuff, that he was basically playing metal drums anyway. Most of his blastbeats were very much death metal if you ask me!